The Holocaust claimed anywhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million Romani lives, a tragedy the Romani people and Sinti refer to as the Porrajmos, or “the Devouring.” Notwithstanding the scope of the catastrophe, the Romani genocide has all too often been minimized or ignored. A Romani-born British citizen, activist, and scholar, Hancock has been instrumental in raising awareness about this tragedy. For the past four decades, he has been a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the director of the Romani Studies program and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center. He has represented the Romani people at the United Nations, served as a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, and is currently a state commissioner on the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. At this special event Hancock will be introduced by Yale Strom, an expert in Jewish and Roma culture during and after the Holocaust.

Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Department of Ethnic Studies